Latest / Devil Town / The Devil Comes to Gilmer | Chapter 2

Transcript

The Devil Comes to Gilmer | Chapter 2 · Devil Town

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: This podcast is intended for mature audiences. Listener discretion is advised.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: On a dark winter night in nineteen ninety two, high
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: school senior Kelly day Wilson finished her shift at NTV
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Northeast Texas Video, a movie rental store on the town
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: square in Gilmer, Texas. Kelly locked up the shop with
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: manager Joe Henry.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: I say, you opened tomorrow and she says yes, and
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: I said, okay.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: See that was the last time anyone is known to
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: have seen Kelly.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: The mom called me about six the next morning and
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: asked me if she'd go anywhere sink. I said, yes,
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: you going with the girls house? And that's all I
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: knew at the time. It was a little bit disturbing
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: to me, but I mean's like much of.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: A Kelly and one of her friends, a fellow student
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: at Gilmour High School, had made plans to attend a
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: party together, a party out of town. Kelly never showed.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: At seven a m Kelly's mom, Kathy, called the police department.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: She got on the phone with a veteran sergeant named
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: James York Brown. From the get go, Sergeant Brown wondered
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: if Kelly simply ran away from home he asked Kathy
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: and her husband Robert to come down to the station
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: to file a missing person's report. Then Sergeant Brown drove
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: over to look at Kelly's car. Her gold Dodge Charger
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: was still parked beside the video store. There was a
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: bottle of vodka inside the car. The keys were missing,
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: no signs of a struggle, but the left rear tire
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: had been slashed. The tire had even come off the rim.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: That's an important detail. Obviously Kelly or someone had tried
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: to drive the car before realizing it was flat. After
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: closing up the video store with Joe Kelly's life, last
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: task of the night would have been to drop off
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: all the cash from that day's movie rentals. The bank
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: was just a couple of blocks northeast of the store,
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: and when Sergeant Brown checked with the bank, sure enough
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: the nightly deposit had been made.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: Lati has probably been slash by this time. Is not
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: known if she backed out, started off in the tires
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: flat and cooled back in, or if she went all
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: the way around to the mine to do the deposit
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: and then come back in.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: Kelly's parents were divorced, her dad and stepmom Robbie and
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: Waverlin lived in the town of Knaketish, Louisiana, which is
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: about two and a half hours southeast of Gilmour. That winter,
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: Kelly had been telling her friends that she was moving
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: back to Louisiana, where she'd spent most of her childhood.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: Had she left Gilmour without saying goodbye, Kathy called Waverlin.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: Waverland called Robbie.
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: Won't say. It was like eight or nine o'clock in
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: the morning.
• 2:56
  Speaker 4: Wavern called me at work, said, told me a little bit,
• 2:59
  Speaker 4: and you know, I told my people I had to
• 3:01
  Speaker 4: go sham home.
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: We got backed up, we went, we went to So
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: you were worried at that point.
• 3:09
  Speaker 5: Oh?
• 3:09
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: Robbie had always felt that his daughter was just a
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: little too trusting.
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: Kearn never met a stranger. She was very, very outgoing,
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: probably to her own.
• 3:21
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it concerned me a little bit because she again,
• 3:25
  Speaker 4: she never she could go up to a perfect stranger,
• 3:29
  Speaker 4: strike a conversation, just like she'd known them all her life.
• 3:34
  Speaker 4: Best I can remember, we went straight to the police
• 3:37
  Speaker 4: station and talked to.
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: Uh, sorry Brown.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: Sergeant Brown was lean and linky. He rocked a dark
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: brown mustache and aviator sunglasses. Picture a local cop from
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: like an eighties movie. That's James Brown.
• 3:55
  Speaker 4: Oh, he's a fairly typical small town police officer from
• 3:58
  Speaker 4: what I could you know, be away describe it. He
• 4:01
  Speaker 4: kind of ran us through what they had had so far. Uh,
• 4:07
  Speaker 4: pretty much the basics of the story. She you know,
• 4:10
  Speaker 4: she had closed the stores, she'd she'd her car had
• 4:14
  Speaker 4: been moved from where it was originally parked, assuming that
• 4:17
  Speaker 4: she had taken a bank deposits to the bank which
• 4:20
  Speaker 4: they were made. Uh, and her car was back at
• 4:25
  Speaker 4: the store in it but in a different parking slot.
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: I think there was a I think her person.
• 4:32
  Speaker 4: Was still in the car. There was I think I
• 4:34
  Speaker 4: remember writing a vodka bottle in the car. There were uh,
• 4:38
  Speaker 4: you know, who knows how long that stuff, and her
• 4:40
  Speaker 4: purse probably was there.
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: But that, you know, and that's pretty much about it. Really.
• 4:48
  Speaker 4: Why why they didn't impound the car treated as a
• 4:52
  Speaker 4: crime scene, I mean they were treating everything as just
• 4:55
  Speaker 4: a common, ordinary, everyday missing person runaway type same rather
• 5:00
  Speaker 4: than a crime scene. So there was a lot of
• 5:03
  Speaker 4: probably potential evidence that could have been collected.
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: It wasn't.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: Hard to imagine the teenage girl running away without her purse.
• 5:12
  Speaker 4: Yeah, or without her car. Why wouldn't she take a car? Uh,
• 5:21
  Speaker 4: you know, let's unless somebody you know abducted her. What
• 5:29
  Speaker 4: else do you hear she voluntarily left for somebody else,
• 5:32
  Speaker 4: you know, that would be the only two scenarios I
• 5:37
  Speaker 4: could come up with.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: That's what a lot of people thought at first. Maybe
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: Kelly couldn't decide which household to live in, so she
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: skipped down with a boyfriend.
• 5:48
  Speaker 7: I just remember in the beginning, it was a.
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: She ran off.
• 5:54
  Speaker 8: They just kept saying, Oh, she ran off with some boy.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: That's Kelly's friend from high school.
• 5:58
  Speaker 6: Lee.
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: It was a lot of she's a wild child.
• 6:02
  Speaker 8: She definitely just ran off with some boy for the
• 6:06
  Speaker 8: first couple of days, I believe.
• 6:08
  Speaker 9: I feel like it took them a couple of days
• 6:10
  Speaker 9: before they took it seriously.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: That mindset was about to shift. The bank where everybody
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: thought Kelly made the deposit right before she disappeared had
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: a security camera. Sergeant Brown got hold of the footage.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: It showed three vehicles making deposits around the time that
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: Kelly would have left the video store. None of the
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: vehicles was an eighty five Dodge Charger, though, nor did
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: any of the drivers look like Kelly. Although the video
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: quality was so bad it was hard to know for sure.
• 6:40
  Speaker 10: I just had a feeling, ominous feeling that just did
• 6:42
  Speaker 10: not go to run well, and that I can't tell
• 6:48
  Speaker 10: you why I did fail, and I just had that
• 6:50
  Speaker 10: as Unfortunately it turned out to be pretty true.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: Robbie had no idea how bad it was going to get.
• 6:57
  Speaker 6: It's the story of a missing teenage girl.
• 7:00
  Speaker 4: To find her would change the lines of just about
• 7:01
  Speaker 4: everyone she knew.
• 7:03
  Speaker 5: In this case of missing Gilmourtine Kelly Wilson.
• 7:06
  Speaker 11: She told be careful that I could end up like
• 7:10
  Speaker 11: Kelly Wilson. The strip put fear in me.
• 7:17
  Speaker 6: If there was devil worshiping back in the woods right
• 7:20
  Speaker 6: behind your.
• 7:20
  Speaker 5: House, Yeah, further back in the woods.
• 7:24
  Speaker 12: The details are sketchy, the trail goes cold, and Kelly
• 7:28
  Speaker 12: Wilson vanishes forever in the small town of Gilmour, everyone
• 7:32
  Speaker 12: wants to know what happened to Kelly Wilson.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: From Imperative Entertainment. I'm West Ferguson. This is Deviltown. This
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: is chapter two, The Devil comes to town. It's been
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: thirty years since Kelly Wilson walked out of Northeast Texas.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: Video and vanished into the night. I was a kid
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: back then. Now I'm trying to answer a question that
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: seems so simple, and yet it's been devil the town
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: of Gilmer for decades.
• 8:21
  Speaker 7: STA Steel, no answers, and the disappearance of Kelly Wilson.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: Leaving the city wondering well they ever know. That's all
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: anyone can say for certain.
• 8:32
  Speaker 13: Kelly Wilson has vanished.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: From day one. Sergeant James York Brown led the investigation.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: He probably knows more about Kelly's disappearance than anyone else,
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: but this case changed his life. It nearly broke him.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: To this day. Some folks in Gilmer wonder if Sergeant
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: Brown knows more than he's letting on. I mailed Sergeant
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: Brown a letter and called a few times. Nothing. One day,
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: I even tried to drive by his house to knock
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: on his front door. He lives way out in the country. Now,
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: the map on my phone sent me far off course
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: to a pine forest in the middle of nowhere, not
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: a house in sight. Kelly's mom, Kathy, had already decided
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: not to talk to me. Without Sergeant Brown, I'd probably
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: never find out what happened to Kelly. Then I dove
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: a little deeper into Facebook and Reddit comments about the case.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: They were full of finger pointing and amateur investigators. James
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: York Brown was a prime suspect in the eyes of some.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: Here are a few examples.
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: I still think it was the cop.
• 9:37
  Speaker 6: To me, he was so creepy.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: It was in it up to his ears.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: One of the commenters caught my attention. This guy was feisty.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: Plenty of bad information here. I'd be proud to set
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: some things straight. I lost good years of my childhood
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: to this case. He is my father. I'd be happy
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: to answer any questions you have. Jan Brown has a son.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: His name is Josh. I found a phone number.
• 10:05
  Speaker 6: Oh I've been mad. Yeah, I've been mad.
• 10:08
  Speaker 8: I've even questioned my own dad, just out of out
• 10:13
  Speaker 8: of fury, out of out of fucking lost time, and
• 10:16
  Speaker 8: just just being just flat out mad, you know, trying
• 10:26
  Speaker 8: to figure out why I've questioned dad, My brother's questioned dad.
• 10:31
  Speaker 8: My brother and I both questioned each other just you know,
• 10:36
  Speaker 8: we wanted to know what we were shielded from. But
• 10:39
  Speaker 8: I can guarantee you that I can guarantee you he
• 10:44
  Speaker 8: didn't do it.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: Josh's mom and dad split up when he was a toddler.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: He was eight when his dad took on Kelly's case.
• 10:53
  Speaker 8: They've been divorced. It's all I can remember, you know.
• 10:56
  Speaker 8: I just see dad on the weekends, first, third, and fifth.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: Back then, Sergeant Brown was always on the job, whether
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: he was in uniform or not.
• 11:06
  Speaker 8: He had a Brown trans am and uh, you know,
• 11:10
  Speaker 8: we we would go ride the back roads on the weekend.
• 11:13
  Speaker 8: And uh, I didn't know this, but you know he
• 11:18
  Speaker 8: was he was looking. I remember he would talk to
• 11:21
  Speaker 8: people when we were just, you know, quote riding around
• 11:26
  Speaker 8: and he would ask him, hey, you know, you see anything?
• 11:31
  Speaker 8: You know, he was always asking questions. You know anybody
• 11:37
  Speaker 8: and everybody that you know, everybody. Gimmer's a small town.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: Josh and I had been talking for a while. I
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: had to ask, do you think he'd want to talk
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: to me.
• 11:47
  Speaker 6: I don't know that he would.
• 11:49
  Speaker 8: I think he's I think he's pretty well done with
• 11:51
  Speaker 8: that stage in his life that you know, he's moved
• 11:55
  Speaker 8: on from that really doesn't want anything to do with it.
• 11:59
  Speaker 8: I will call him and ask him and see if
• 12:02
  Speaker 8: he'll do one more interview. However, my request, if I'm
• 12:08
  Speaker 8: going to do that for you, give us the direction
• 12:12
  Speaker 8: that's going to be geared, because if you're going to
• 12:15
  Speaker 8: try to make him look like a criminal, yeah, we
• 12:17
  Speaker 8: ain't got much use for that.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: Josh and I hung up. Minutes later, the phone buzzed
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: in my pocket Josh again. He had his dad on
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: the line. I scrambled to find my recorder. Mister Brown,
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: thank you so much for being willing to get on
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: the phone with me.
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: My name is he.
• 12:38
  Speaker 6: Before you get started, lest I want you understand.
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: You've I've talked to Dad and h You've got a
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: few minutes.
• 12:49
  Speaker 8: And if he gets uncomfortable, I told him to hung up,
• 12:54
  Speaker 8: or he can say hey, I don't feel comfortable and
• 12:56
  Speaker 8: hang up. So understood, get started, understood, and I won't
• 13:04
  Speaker 8: take too much of your time.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: Sergeant Brown. James had been a cop for several years
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: in Gilmer before he answered the call to search for
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: Kelly Wilson. He believed in his mission to serve and protect.
• 13:16
  Speaker 11: And that was the whole region of being in law
• 13:19
  Speaker 11: enforcement anyway, or in my opinion, it is is to
• 13:23
  Speaker 11: help people and take them And I mean I went
• 13:27
  Speaker 11: to shootings and bandage people up until they get the ambulance.
• 13:32
  Speaker 6: The whole hopefully they subviigned it.
• 13:36
  Speaker 11: You know, it didn't matter if they were the bad
• 13:38
  Speaker 11: guy or the good guy.
• 13:39
  Speaker 6: It was just your job was to take it.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: Didn't take him long to realize that Kelly's situation was
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: more dire than a case of a teenage runaway.
• 13:50
  Speaker 11: Usually if somebody runs from their home or was a
• 13:54
  Speaker 11: runaway or usually sign them within cyber or six days.
• 14:00
  Speaker 11: But then from what I understood, she was supposed to
• 14:05
  Speaker 11: live with her father in Louisiana.
• 14:07
  Speaker 6: And when he told me that, I said, just don't.
• 14:10
  Speaker 11: Look good at all, because usually a person don't maybe
• 14:13
  Speaker 11: eight from where.
• 14:15
  Speaker 6: They want to go.
• 14:18
  Speaker 11: They could have run away, or anything could have happened.
• 14:23
  Speaker 11: But you start at that point and then you.
• 14:27
  Speaker 6: Go from where the last place was.
• 14:31
  Speaker 11: And you know, even in this case, there was problems
• 14:35
  Speaker 11: with that because the vehicle was tampered with by this
• 14:40
  Speaker 11: stepfather and mother of her at that time, before we
• 14:45
  Speaker 11: were notified.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: Kelly's stepdad, Robert, not to be confused with Kelly's dad, Robbie,
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: probably didn't give a second thought to grabbing the purse
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: when he found Kelly's unlocked car beside the video store.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: But in Sergeant Brown's opinion, Robert had had already compromised
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: the crime scene purse.
• 15:03
  Speaker 11: With thetization of another They had already went.
• 15:06
  Speaker 6: Through that car before we got that.
• 15:08
  Speaker 11: You had to start at zero because you don't know
• 15:11
  Speaker 11: what was removed from the vega or anything.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: Sergeant Brown didn't really think the car held any clues,
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: so he turned his search elsewhere. That meant interviewing everyone
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: he could find.
• 15:22
  Speaker 6: You talked to the people that were there at the story,
• 15:26
  Speaker 6: You talked to people outside you.
• 15:29
  Speaker 11: I mean, there's a lot of interviews that were done
• 15:32
  Speaker 11: with the last people that had contact, and from there
• 15:35
  Speaker 11: you start nearing your focus. And of course I was
• 15:38
  Speaker 11: and a loan in the investigation.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: Enter Philip Williams.
• 15:42
  Speaker 7: About two or three days that you disa feared, he
• 15:45
  Speaker 7: called me in said I need some help. Distinct remember
• 15:49
  Speaker 7: saying that.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: Philip Williams was and is a newspaper reporter in Gilmer.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: You heard from him in the first episode.
• 15:56
  Speaker 7: And then he told me we got this missing girl.
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: To spread the word, Philip wrote a news article that
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: described Kelly blue eyes, sandy, blonde hair, five foot seven,
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty pounds. She was last seen wearing
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: blue jean cut off shorts and a purple rugby shirt
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: with a white collar and white sleeve bands. Sergeant Brown
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: also called the Texas Rangers, Louisiana Police, and the FBI,
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: looking for help anywhere he could find it.
• 16:24
  Speaker 11: The FBI help when Danley's and interview people.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: There had been a few skateboarders out that night on
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: the town square. According to at least one news report,
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: A handful of people told police they saw Kelly go
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: back into the video store after she discovered her flat tire,
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: but apparently no one saw what happened after that. Asking around,
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: Sergeant Brown found out that one of Kelly's tires also
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: had been slashed that Friday, two nights before she vanished.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: Another girl who worked with Kelly at the video store
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: also had one of her tires slashed on Saturday, just
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: one night before. Maybe this this last tire was related,
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: maybe not. Another baffling detail has to do with that
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: bank deposit. For some reason, Sergeant Brown told the news
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: media that Kelly was shown on the security camera making
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: the deposit, even though the camera didn't really show that.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: I guess it's possible she walked two blocks to make
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: the deposit off camera, but that seems unlikely given that
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: it was dark and pretty cold in Gilmer that night.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: If not Kelly, then who dropped off the money?
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: I'll let them carry my truck through to eliminate it.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: That's Joe Henry again, the store manager.
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: We went drove through. Do that twice. Let's screw it.
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: Did that to us? Eliminated my truck.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: Sergeant Brown, the FBI and Texas Rangers all interviewed Joe.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: Joe was a bachelor in his mid thirties. He and
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: Kelly had been alone on her last night at the
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: video store. Was he hiding something? Did you get the
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: impression that they were asking some certain questions because they
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: were trying to decide if you were.
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, but they were very very nice. I mean yes,
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: because I mean you start, I'm the proverbial last person.
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: To see here.
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: That's that's you know. I wasn't but whatever happened was
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: the last person. But I'm the proverbial last person to
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: see her. So we started with me and you worked
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: away out.
• 18:19
  Speaker 14: Well.
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: We went through all this stuff, and it was very hard,
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: very difficult, because I'd gone home that night. My mom
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: was home the next door navy and that saw me
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: come home. A guy at the grocery store. I bet
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: and bought some stuff from my mom and group the
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: frozen and stuff. Went home, took shower, eight and supper.
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: Call my girlfriend and talked to her. She got me
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: back in a little bit and this was crazy and
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: asked me, he says, your dog in the yard.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: And I said, yeah, I think so, kind of random.
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: So I got up and looked out the one and
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: there he was, you know, and her name was Angela.
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: She since passed away. But but all these people, now,
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: I tried to think, y'all, go comp.
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: Of these people. We don't need to.
• 18:54
  Speaker 15: It's hard.
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: So okay, I mean I had never ready here, interesting,
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: anything like this before, and this is just terrifying, you know.
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: But yeah, but they were very courteous and I didn't
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: want They told me too and all that, and we
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: went through any time they wanted.
• 19:11
  Speaker 6: To talk, we talked.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: Everybody in town knew Joe, and not just from the
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: video store or his burger joined around the block. Joe
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: was from a good family with deep ties in Gilmer.
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: He also had a solid alibi. Pretty soon he was
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: more or less eliminated from the list of suspects, at
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: least in the eyes of law. Enforcement, although Joe says
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: he remained in touch with Sergeant Brown and the FBI
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: and goa Jane to tell me something.
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: We were kind of confident with each other. After a time,
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: we got over the hurdle of me and I mine. Obviously,
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: they ever quit looking at me in that respect. But
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: after a while it changed and they would come over
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: and eat lunch. We would talk and I told the
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: guy I felt bad about that, about not staying an
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: extra ten minutes or whatever. He said, you cannot lay yourself.
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: He said, that is not your problem. He said, I
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: know it's a bad situation, but he said you can't.
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: You can't put yourself in that situation that if you
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: had been then this wouldn't have happened. I mean, it's
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: just that you just can't speculate on my kind stuff.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: Winding through the woods northwest of Gilmour is a narrow,
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: and some would say mysterious road named the Cherokee Trace.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: It's much older than all the other roads in the area.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: In fact, Cherokee Indians blazed the trail more than two
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: centuries ago, supposedly by dragging buffalo skins through the brush.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: To this day, it remains a lonely out of the
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: way black Top Lane meandering out of town for several miles.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: In this story, the Cherokee Trace will come up again
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: and again. One month after Kelly disappeared, three hundred volunteers
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: and a pack of search dogs combed the woods near
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: Cherokee Trace. The spot was a popular hangout for local teens.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: What's more, a new reservoir, Gilmour Lake, was being planned
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: for the area. The searchers found some mounds of recently
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: turned earth, but it turned out that a team of
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: archaeologists had been digging for Indian relics. There were no
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: signs of Kelly. Sergeant Brown kept up the search on
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: his own time. Meanwhile, Kelly's dad and stepmom practically moved
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: to Gilmour.
• 21:21
  Speaker 4: It seemed like every weekend there for quite a few months, we.
• 21:26
  Speaker 6: Were over there.
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: You know, we would follow a lead or just find
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: a place in search. I mean, it was just, you know,
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: he felt like he had to do some.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: Finally, in late April, Sergeant Brown seemed to get his
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: first real break. A high school dropout named Michael Biby
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: confessed to slashing Kelly's car tire on the night she vanished. Biby,
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: who was seventeen years old at the time, was arrested
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: on a misdemeanor charge of criminal mischief.
• 21:53
  Speaker 7: The guy that's last retire He was brought in the court,
• 21:57
  Speaker 7: played guilty and to a missdemainor, and I was there
• 22:02
  Speaker 7: when he was sentenced. But apparently, through a remarkable coincidence,
• 22:06
  Speaker 7: he had nothing to do with her disappearance. He's last retired,
• 22:11
  Speaker 7: she disappears, but he didn't have thing to do with
• 22:13
  Speaker 7: the disappearance.
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: Or as a law was concerned. That's quite the coincidence.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: Michael Biby moved out of state a long time ago.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: I've tried really hard to reach him, phone calls, emails,
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: he blocked me on Facebook. Ultimately police decided his tire
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: slashing was just a random act of vandalism. Police were
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: back to square one. That spring high school graduation came
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: and went with no sign of Kelly. The Gilmer class
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: of ninety two dedicated this ceremony to their missing classmate.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: In the news, Sergeant Brown maintained that he was still
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: interviewing people and pursuing leads, but reading between the lines,
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: it seemed like the case.
• 22:59
  Speaker 6: Had gone.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: Desperate for clues. Sergeant Brown was about to take a
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: trip to the spirit world.
• 23:12
  Speaker 16: Hi, Sergeant Brown, is it?
• 23:14
  Speaker 5: Hi? Sergeant Brown?
• 23:16
  Speaker 16: Just fine? Well, James, have you ever worked with the
• 23:19
  Speaker 16: psychic before?
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: No, ma'am James Brown dial to psychic. With the search
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: for their daughter seeming to stall out, Kelly's parents had
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: asked Sergeant James York Brown of the Gilmert Police Department
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: to seek help from none other than Narene Rainier, a
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: psychic detective in Florida. Here's Miss Renier being interviewed for
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: a YouTube show just last year.
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: Welcome to Paranormal Yaker.
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: My guest today is psychic detective Noreen Rainier.
• 24:06
  Speaker 11: She is the only psychic ever to lecture at the
• 24:10
  Speaker 11: FBI Academy and has assisted.
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: Law enforcement officials all over the world.
• 24:16
  Speaker 9: I've been shot with a shotgun, and I've been a
• 24:19
  Speaker 9: male in male parts. I've had my throat slit many times,
• 24:24
  Speaker 9: stammed in the head, and for some reason, while I'm
• 24:29
  Speaker 9: in this sort of trance state, I don't get upset.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: Ranier is famous for her paranormal services. She's worked on
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: more than six hundred unsolved cases and even lectured at
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: the FBI Academy in nineteen eighty one. Believe it or not,
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: Using psychics on missing persons cases at that time was
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: a thing. The Atlanta child murders, where many young black
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: boys went missing at the hands of a mysterious killer,
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: most famously used psychics to help scour the woods for
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: bodies around the Atlanta area. In the early nineteen eighties.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: The Gilmer Police sent Lorene a tennis shoe, scarf, belt, necklace,
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: and watch, all items that had belonged to Kelly. This
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: is an actual recording from the psychic session with Sergeant Brown.
• 25:15
  Speaker 16: Now, I'm gonna ask Nouren to relax, be with Kelly.
• 25:22
  Speaker 16: See Kelly. What just describe Kelly for.
• 25:28
  Speaker 15: More short than pause, more short around your pretty prettiness
• 25:34
  Speaker 15: in her face.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: Sergeant Brown was on the other end of the line.
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: It went on like that for a while.
• 25:40
  Speaker 5: Tell us what you're feeling seeing this killer. Want to
• 25:44
  Speaker 5: know only about the killer, Kelly. Relax, tell us what
• 25:50
  Speaker 5: you feel. Tell us what you feel.
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: Stunning is cousingly pain.
• 26:00
  Speaker 15: You know to tell you the murderers, but I'm having
• 26:03
  Speaker 15: an the stomach.
• 26:05
  Speaker 5: Go beyond the pain. Now, you want to go beyond the.
• 26:09
  Speaker 15: Pains were pushed up me.
• 26:15
  Speaker 5: Go beyond the pain.
• 26:19
  Speaker 14: Relax, relax, come back to Noreene. To come back to Noreene,
• 26:26
  Speaker 14: be relaxed, James. We want Nourene to take just a
• 26:31
  Speaker 14: little break from being psychic at this point. When we
• 26:36
  Speaker 14: hit upon something that's stressful or painful, sometimes we have
• 26:39
  Speaker 14: to do this so we don't lose very completely.
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: I'm going to ask her to take in her trance
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: like state, Noreene envision two possible suspects. She described their
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: facial appearances, a big man with thin hair, small eyes,
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: round narrow shoulders, and baggy jeans, and a smaller man
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: with curly hair and a broad note listening along. A
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: police sketch artist drew their composite pictures that winner nearly
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: to the day since Kelly was last seen. Gilmur Police
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: Chief al McAllister unveiled the drawings and asked for the
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: public's help finding the two men, while noting that information
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: from psychics is not admissible in court. This really was
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: presented to the town to try to find who might
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: have been behind Kelly's disappearance.
• 27:27
  Speaker 7: They had at the end of that year where us
• 27:30
  Speaker 7: the girl disappeared On January fifth of ninety two, on
• 27:33
  Speaker 7: New Year's Eve, they had a press conference where the
• 27:36
  Speaker 7: police station was then, and they got so desperate that
• 27:41
  Speaker 7: they had looked up a psyche out of Florida and
• 27:45
  Speaker 7: this woman from this psyching in Florida. Based on her description,
• 27:49
  Speaker 7: they had drawings there two men, and they said, if
• 27:55
  Speaker 7: anybody knows these people, the police you said, we'd like
• 27:58
  Speaker 7: to hear from our words to that effect. So the
• 28:01
  Speaker 7: case was not just put in a drawer and showed
• 28:04
  Speaker 7: to the back. This was nearly a year later to
• 28:08
  Speaker 7: the day. In fact, it lacked five days being here
• 28:11
  Speaker 7: to the day, and they were still trying to solve it.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: Phone calls flooded in from people who thought they recognized
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: the police sketches. They didn't lead to any arrest, though
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: none of us knew it at the time, but Sergeant
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: Brown did have a different lead, or maybe a hunch.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: He zeroed in on the guys Kelly had been dating
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: prior to her disappearance. Of particular interest was Chris Denton,
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: a fellow senior at Gilmer High School. But neither Chris
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: nor any of Kelly's other exes looked like the suspects
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: in the police sketch. We'll go deeper into Chris Denton's
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: story later in the series.
• 28:49
  Speaker 7: He was once named publicly as the chief suspect, but
• 28:52
  Speaker 7: they never could apparently get the.
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: Goods of them and even never charged.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: By this point, as far as most of us knew,
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: James Brown was still a trusted member of law enforcement,
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: but he also had a life outside of work, and
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: Sergeant Brown had met someone.
• 29:08
  Speaker 13: He was just a real outgoing kind person. He was tall,
• 29:15
  Speaker 13: in good shape, He was handsome to me, and his personality,
• 29:22
  Speaker 13: you know, has really what won me over, because he
• 29:25
  Speaker 13: was just a real kind individual.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: This is Penny. She was soon to be Penny Brown.
• 29:31
  Speaker 13: He was working on that case when I met him.
• 29:37
  Speaker 13: I wasn't familiar with that case at all. He didn't
• 29:42
  Speaker 13: share cases Case Stiles with me. I'd say maybe about
• 29:48
  Speaker 13: a month after I met him, we started dating and
• 29:52
  Speaker 13: we really enjoyed each other's company. Real happy, outgoing, hard
• 29:57
  Speaker 13: working person.
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: By this time, and the search for Kelly was entering
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: its second year and it really seemed to be going nowhere.
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: But James and Penny were in love. In November nineteen
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: ninety three, just ten months after the couple met, they
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: got married at the local Methodist church.
• 30:13
  Speaker 14: Oh.
• 30:14
  Speaker 13: I was ecstatic I was really happy, very happy. We
• 30:20
  Speaker 13: returned from our honeymoon and I we both went back
• 30:27
  Speaker 13: to work and just trying to think. I don't know
• 30:32
  Speaker 13: if it was a month later or a month and
• 30:35
  Speaker 13: a half later that I was at home with my
• 30:38
  Speaker 13: daughter and he had gone out of town to a school.
• 30:46
  Speaker 13: What it had to do with law enforcement.
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: James Brown had been at law enforcement training in College Station,
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: three and a half hours south of Gilmour when a
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: SWAT team descended on the training facility and took him
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: into custody. Penny was back home in Gilmer when she
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: heard a knock.
• 31:03
  Speaker 6: On the door.
• 31:05
  Speaker 13: The chaplain came by my house and told me that
• 31:13
  Speaker 13: he was either arrested or was going to be arrested
• 31:17
  Speaker 13: for the kidnapping, rape, and murder of Kellen Wilson. And
• 31:22
  Speaker 13: I was dumbfounded. I was just blown away. It was
• 31:27
  Speaker 13: very shocking.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: The sensational news of James Brown's arrest tore through East
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: Texas and beyond. Everybody was stunned. It turns out there
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: was another investigation going on at the same time as
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: the search for Kelly, an investigation that led not just
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: to Sergeant Brown, but to seven other men and women
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: who were already in jail on other terrible charges. Almost
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: two years to the day after Kelly disappeared from the
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: Downtown Square in Gilmer, Texas, the police sergeant who was
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: supposed to be leading the search was instead thrown in
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: jail indicted in the kidnapping, sexual assault, and death of
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: Kelly Day Wilson. Brown showed no emotion and made no
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: comment as he passed through the hallway leading to the jail.
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: Brown's bond is six hundred and fifty thousand.
• 32:15
  Speaker 4: Dollars the murder, kidnapping, and rape of seventeen year old
• 32:18
  Speaker 4: Kelly Wilson.
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: I'm innocent.
• 32:21
  Speaker 11: I'm looking forward to a coordinated as soon as possible
• 32:27
  Speaker 11: so that the truth can come out and.
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: I can be acquitted.
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: Maybe even more shocking, if that's possible, was how and
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: why Brown and these other folks had supposedly pulled off
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: a crime more heinous than any of us could have imagined.
• 32:44
  Speaker 12: It's feared she was kidnapped, raped and murdered by a
• 32:47
  Speaker 12: group locals are calling a satanic cult, and that Kelly
• 32:50
  Speaker 12: may have actually been eaten in a ritualistic killing.
• 32:54
  Speaker 11: For the past two years, Sergeant James Brown has been
• 32:56
  Speaker 11: the only investigator on the Wilson case.
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: It was a j he volunteered for.
• 33:01
  Speaker 11: Now he's a suspect in her disappearance.
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: Deviltown is a production of Imperative Entertainment. It was written
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: and created by me Wes Ferguson. Executive producer is Jason Hoak.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: Audio engineering and editing by Shane Freeman and Jason Hoak.
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: Original score is by Robert Ellis, recording by Austin Sissler
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: at Eastside Studios. If you like the show, leave a
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: review and don't forget to tell your friends thanks for listening.